100 books like Count Scar

I love British history. I am fascinated by ancient roots; legends and myths arising from around the Roman invasion. Stories of Boudicca, Casswallen, Celtic legends, and Arthurian tales hold me in a world of imaginings and anticipation. These exciting stories have been told and retold, but Cartimandua, Warrior Queen of Brigantia is new to me. She, a Yorkshire lass like me – led the largest tribe in Britain. I have become absorbed into the iron-age lives and loves of her Brigantia. The interwoven links between known facts and fantasy intrigue me. My favourite books here encouraged my journey of discovery; the old birthing the new. The legends from Britain grow.

Tolkien and Lewis got their hooks into me when I was a teen and this led me to spend many hours playing RPGs, devouring fantasy novels by the armful. Unfortunately, many books were disdainful of faith (particularly of the medieval European variety) but the respectful ones inspired me. Years later, I decided to write my own novels and add a science-based perspective from 20+ years as an engineer. The result is a series of 5 epic fantasy novels. I have plans for more, branching out into sci-fi, romance, children’s books, and historical fiction. My recommendations showcase a few of the writers who inspired me and still provide a model for my work.

Tolkien and Lewis got their hooks into me when I was a teen and this led me to spend many hours playing RPGs, devouring fantasy novels by the armful. Unfortunately, many books were disdainful of faith (particularly of the medieval European variety) but the respectful ones inspired me. Years later, I decided to write my own novels and add a science-based perspective from 20+ years as an engineer. The result is a series of 5 epic fantasy novels. I have plans for more, branching out into sci-fi, romance, children’s books, and historical fiction. My recommendations showcase a few of the writers who inspired me and still provide a model for my work.

Tolkien and Lewis got their hooks into me when I was a teen and this led me to spend many hours playing RPGs, devouring fantasy novels by the armful. Unfortunately, many books were disdainful of faith (particularly of the medieval European variety) but the respectful ones inspired me. Years later, I decided to write my own novels and add a science-based perspective from 20+ years as an engineer. The result is a series of 5 epic fantasy novels. I have plans for more, branching out into sci-fi, romance, children’s books, and historical fiction. My recommendations showcase a few of the writers who inspired me and still provide a model for my work.

I’m fascinated by these themes – love, France, mystery, women’s lives, war, and peace. My parents took me to France when I was 12 and I’ve spent years there in between and go back whenever I can. I started reading in French when sent to be an au pair in Switzerland when I was 17. My own novel, The Lost Love Letters Of Henri Fournier was absorbing to write as it contains all of the above. I found an unpublished novel of Fournier’s in a village in rural France a few years ago and decided I had to write about him and his lover, Pauline, who was a famous French actress. 

My first recollection of a fascination with medieval history occurred while watching Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. I soon exhausted our school library’s limited selection of tales of kings and castles. Much later, a history degree and decades spent in Germany and England allowed me to delve deeply into historical research, gaining a specialized knowledge into the areas in which I was most interested. I am particularly fascinated with the lives of women, most of whom medieval chroniclers relegate to a brief mention as wives and mothers. There are clearly stories here yet to be told and I am always excited to learn of new scholarship.

I am an art historian and a horticulturist, specializing in the art, architecture, and gardens of the Middle Ages, and I’ve published a number of books on these subjects. But I’ve always loved mystery stories, and I dreamed of writing one of my own. When I discovered Christine de Pizan, an extraordinary personage who defied all the stereotypes about medieval women, I decided to write a series of mystery novels featuring her as the sleuth.

I am a historian of medieval women, especially women in the Iberian peninsula, and royal women. I became interested in Berenguela of Castile through studying her sister, Blanche, who was queen and regent of France. I learned about Blanche through studying Cistercian architecture – I remain really interested in material culture, memorialization, interpersonal relationships (like motherhood!), and political life in the medieval world, all of which I study primarily through the lens of gender. I still turn to these classic, foundational works on medieval women when I want to teach students how the field developed, and when I want to understand essential premises about Iberia, motherhood, religion, queenship, and historiography. 

I knew nothing about wine and drank it only rarely until I went to Paris as a graduate student in the 1970s. Even then, I couldn’t afford more than basic plonk. It was not until I started doing research in Dijon every summer in the 1980s, making great friends in the process, eating and drinking at their dining tables, and visiting their favorite vignerons with them for dégustations, that I began to appreciate wine, not just as a fantastic beverage, but as a social and cultural creator. And as a historian, I appreciate that drinking wine that comes from vineyards planted in the Middle Ages connects us with our ancestors in the past.

In my novels, I aim to present a different vision of early Post-Roman Britain than the one usually imagined in fiction – especially in the future Kingdom of Kent, where my books are set. To show these connections, and to present the greater background for the events in the novels, I first needed to gain knowledge of what Europe itself looked like in this period: a Gaul divided between Gothic, Frankish, and Roman administration, a complex interplay of Romans and Barbarians, a world in transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The story gleaned from the pages of these books proved as fascinating and intriguing as any I’ve ever read.